Gstreamer causing 100% cpu

[supfors]

Home Assistant release (hass --version):
0.44.1

Python release (python3 --version):
Python 3.5.2

Component/platform:
Gstreamer

Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS
4.4.0-62-generic

Description of problem:
When enabling gstreamer, cpu load jumps to 100%. I've noticed hass spawned 2 extra processes in addition to its leader process:

homeassistant@hass:~$  top
PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND                                                                            
2655 homeass+  20   0 1292424  60808   6380 R 100.0  2.8  11:46.58 hass

homeassistant@hass:~$ ps aux |grep hass
homeass+   2407  0.3  3.2 1292664 71452 ?       Ssl  20:49   0:01 /opt/hass/bin/python3 /opt/hass/bin/hass --config /opt/hass
homeass+   2492  0.0  2.7 1108704 60700 ?       Sl   20:49   0:00 /opt/hass/bin/python3 /opt/hass/bin/hass --config /opt/hass
homeass+   2500 99.9  2.7 1292412 60756 ?       R    20:49   5:50 /opt/hass/bin/python3 /opt/hass/bin/hass --config /opt/hass

I've tested multiple pipelines (and even without pipeline) but this does not seem to cause the issue.

Daemon running on the player/speaker:

supfors@speaker:~$ gst-launch-1.0 udpsrc port=5555 caps="application/x-rtp" ! queue ! rtppcmudepay ! mulawdec ! alsasink

The streaming of audio (tts.google_say f.e.) works fine.

I do not see this kind of behaviour when testing from command line using gst-launch-1.0:
homeassistant@hass:~$ gst-launch-1.0 audiotestsrc freq=1000 ! mulawenc ! rtppcmupay ! udpsink host=speaker port=5555

Expected:
Near idle cpu-load when using gstreamer.

Problem-relevant configuration.yaml entries and steps to reproduce:

media_player:
  - platform: gstreamer
    pipeline: "mulawenc ! rtppcmupay ! udpsink host=speaker port=5555"

Traceback (if applicable):
This is all I see in home-assistant.log:

homeassistant@hass:~$ cat log |grep gstr
2017-05-09 21:06:02 INFO (MainThread) [homeassistant.loader] Loaded media_player.gstreamer from homeassistant.components.media_player.gstreamer
2017-05-09 21:06:02 INFO (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.media_player] Setting up media_player.gstreamer
2017-05-09 21:06:02 INFO (Thread-7) [gsp] starting gstreamer
2017-05-09 21:06:02 INFO (MainThread) [homeassistant.core] Bus:Handling <Event state_changed[L]: entity_id=media_player.gstreamer, old_state=None, new_state=<state media_player.gstreamer=idle; friendly_name=gstreamer, supported_features=16933 @ 2017-05-09T21:06:02.991053+02:00>>

Additional info:

homeassistant@hass:~$ pip3 show gi |grep Vers
Metadata-Version: 1.0
Version: 1.2

(hass) homeassistant@hass:~$ pip3 list
aiohttp (2.0.7)
appdirs (1.4.3)
async-timeout (1.2.0)
chardet (3.0.2)
homeassistant (0.44.1)
Jinja2 (2.9.6)
MarkupSafe (1.0)
multidict (2.1.4)
packaging (16.8)
pip (9.0.1)
pyparsing (2.2.0)
pytz (2017.2)
PyYAML (3.12)
requests (2.14.0)
setuptools (35.0.2)
six (1.10.0)
typing (3.6.1)
voluptuous (0.10.5)
wheel (0.29.0)
yarl (0.10.2)

homeassistant@hass:~$ dpkg -l |grep gst
ii  gir1.2-gst-plugins-base-1.0          1.8.3-1ubuntu0.2                         amd64        GObject introspection data for the GStreamer Plugins Base library
ii  gir1.2-gstreamer-1.0                 1.8.3-1~ubuntu0.1                        amd64        GObject introspection data for the GStreamer library
ii  gstreamer1.0-alsa:amd64              1.8.3-1ubuntu0.2                         amd64        GStreamer plugin for ALSA
ii  gstreamer1.0-plugins-base:amd64      1.8.3-1ubuntu0.2                         amd64        GStreamer plugins from the "base" set
ii  gstreamer1.0-plugins-good:amd64      1.8.3-1ubuntu0.4                         amd64        GStreamer plugins from the "good" set
ii  gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly:amd64      1.8.3-1ubuntu0.1                         amd64        GStreamer plugins from the "ugly" set
ii  gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly-amr:amd64  1.8.3-1ubuntu0.1                         amd64        GStreamer plugins from the "ugly" set
ii  gstreamer1.0-tools                   1.8.3-1~ubuntu0.1                        amd64        Tools for use with GStreamer
ii  gstreamer1.0-x:amd64                 1.8.3-1ubuntu0.2                         amd64        GStreamer plugins for X11 and Pango
ii  libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-0:amd64 1.8.3-1ubuntu0.2                         amd64        GStreamer libraries from the "base" set
ii  libgstreamer-plugins-good1.0-0:amd64 1.8.3-1ubuntu0.4                         amd64        GStreamer development files for libraries from the "good" set
ii  libgstreamer1.0-0:amd64              1.8.3-1~ubuntu0.1                        amd64        Core GStreamer libraries and elements
ii  python3-gst-1.0

[happyleavesaoc]

Yeah, that's a known issue at this point, for what it's worth. You could downgrade gstreamer to the earlier version if that one worked for you.

[supfors]

Thanks @happyleavesaoc Tried version 1.0.0. No joy.

[maxx]

I tried reverting the gstreamer-player pip package to 1.0 as well as backing out a738767

Unfortunately both still produce 100% CPU.

I need to find another way to get TTS to pulseaudio.. (for mixing).

[balloobbot]

There hasn't been any activity on this issue recently. Due to the high number of incoming GitHub notifications, we have to clean some of the old issues, as many of them have already been resolved with the latest updates.

Please make sure to update to the latest Home Assistant version and check if that solves the issue. Let us know if that works for you by adding a comment 👍

[balloobbot]

This issue will be auto-closed because there hasn't been any activity for a few months. Feel free to open a new one if you still experience this problem 👍

[maxx]

This is actually still an issue exactly as described above. As @happyleavesaoc mentions above, it apparently remains a known issue.

Could someone please re-open so we can keep this in-context rather than making a new issue?

[cgevans]

This is still an issue. Are we really supposed to create a new issue, despite the discussion here, just because a bot auto-closed a known issue?

[skogsmaskin]

I see the component is based on gstreamer-player. I don't know Python that much, but there must certainly be better supported player modules for python/gstreamer around (one fork, zero stars)? I am also experiencing this problem. 100% on one core. I'm using Arch Linux btw.

[tschmidty69]

I have the same issue so had to disable it. Unfortunately it is the only way I have tts working to test some other stuff. FWIW, happyleaves created that gstream-player and also the home assistant component. There don't seem to be any good alternatives so...

[pzabiel]

It is still actually with Home Assistant 0.61.1 and RPI3 (with up-to-date Raspbian).

[happyleavesaoc]

I've made some attempts to solve this problem, but I didn't come to a good solution, because gstreamer needs a second event loop, incompatible with the home assistant main loop. I encourage someone to either find a better gstreamer-based player to integrate (I could not), or submit a PR to gstreamer-player which I will gladly merge.

[zhujisheng]

the gstreamer-player has a while true loop, with nonblock in it. This causes the 100% CPU.
The simplest is to add time.sleep(0.1) in the loop.
.homeassistant/deps/lib/python3.4/site-packages/gsp/__init__.py

    def run(self):
        """Run the process.
        Iterate the GLib main loop and process the task queue.
        """
        loop = GLib.MainLoop()
        context = loop.get_context()
        while True:
            time.sleep(0.1)
            if context.pending():
                context.iteration()
                self._manager[ATTR_POSITION] = self._position()
            try:
                method, args = self._task_queue.get(False)
                getattr(self, method)(**args)
            except queue.Empty:
                pass
            if self.state != STATE_IDLE:
                continue
            try:
                uri = self._media_queue.get(False)
                self.media(uri)
            except queue.Empty:
                pass

[skalavala]

@zhujisheng that's an interesting fix. Have you checked the CPU usage before and after? Do you notice any difference? Unfortunately I can't test it as I just upgraded to Python3.6, and Gstreamer wouldn't setup.

2018-03-16 09:33:33 ERROR (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.media_player] Error while setting up platform gstreamer
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/srv/homeassistant/lib/python3.6/site-packages/homeassistant/helpers/entity_platform.py", line 82, in async_setup
    SLOW_SETUP_MAX_WAIT, loop=hass.loop)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/asyncio/tasks.py", line 358, in wait_for
    return fut.result()
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/asyncio/futures.py", line 245, in result
    raise self._exception
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/concurrent/futures/thread.py", line 56, in run
    result = self.fn(*self.args, **self.kwargs)
  File "/srv/homeassistant/lib/python3.6/site-packages/homeassistant/components/media_player/gstreamer.py", line 40, in setup_platform
    from gsp import GstreamerPlayer
  File "/srv/homeassistant/lib/python3.6/site-packages/gsp/__init__.py", line 11, in <module>
    import gi  # pylint: disable=import-error
  File "/srv/homeassistant/lib/python3.6/site-packages/gi/__init__.py", line 42, in <module>
    from . import _gi
ImportError: cannot import name '_gi'

Anyone run into this problem?

CC: @happyleavesaoc

[zhujisheng]

I tested it in python3.5, it's ok.
There's many Pypis can't work properly under pytyon3.6, so I haven't use it.

[skalavala]

@zhujisheng I never acknowledged since your last response... My apologies!

I tested it on my end, and the CPU is no longer utilized at it's peak. Thank you for the simple fix!
I am now having one of those "Why didn't I think of that?" moment. 😄

It went down from an average 100% utilization to an average 2% utilization... What a big difference it makes!

[balloobbot]

There hasn't been any activity on this issue recently. Due to the high number of incoming GitHub notifications, we have to clean some of the old issues, as many of them have already been resolved with the latest updates.

Please make sure to update to the latest Home Assistant version and check if that solves the issue. Let us know if that works for you by adding a comment 👍

[partofthething]

That fixed it for me too in Python 3.6. We should file a bug in the dependency. Ok I made one. happyleavesaoc/gstreamer-player#4. This can be tagged as problem in dependency.

[partofthething]

Issue in dependency is now closed. This can be closed too.

[MartinHjelmare]

@partofthething maybe we should wait until the fix is released and the version of the library is bumped in home assistant? Is that in progress?

[partofthething]

@MartinHjelmare excellent point, yes we should. I'll see if i can get some info on the next release.